Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire (26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent who was hugely influential as a Modernist poet and as a spokesman for the Cubist painters. His original name appears in many forms along the lines of Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Apollinaris Kostrowitzky or Wąż-Kostrowicki.

Quotes

De cette alliance nouvelle, car jusqu'ici les décors et les costumes, d'une part, la choréographie, d'autre part, n'avaient entre eux qu'un lien factice, il est résulté, dans Parade, une sorte de sur-réalisme.
- From this new alliance – for until now costume and scenery on one hand, choreography on the other, have been linked only artificially – there has resulted in Parade a kind of sur-réalisme.
- Excelsior, May 11, 1917; translation from Michael Benedikt & George E. Wellwarth (eds.) Modern French Theatre (New York: Dutton, 1964) p. xvii.
- The first usage of the word surrealism in any language.

La géométrie est aux arts plastiques ce que la grammaire est à l'art de l'écrivain.
- Geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer.
- Les peintres cubistes (1913), reprinted in Oeuvres en prose complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1991) vol. 2, p. 11; translation from Lionel Abel (trans.) The Cubist Painters (New York: Wittenborn, 1949) p. 13.
The poems I am writing at the moment will be much closer to your present way of thinking.I am trying to renew poetic style,but within a classical framework.On the other hand,I don't want to lapse into imitating others.Letter to Picasso 1918

Alcools (1912)

A la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien
Bergère ô tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bêle ce matin
Tu en as assez de vivre dans l'antiquité grecque et romaine
- At last you're tired of this elderly world
  Shepherdess O Eiffel Tower this morning the bridges are bleating
  You're fed up living with antiquity
- "Zone", line 1; translation from Donald Revell (trans.) Alcools (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1995) p. 3.

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
- Under Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine.
  Why must I be reminded again
  Of our love?
  Doesn't happiness issue from pain?
  Bring on the night, ring out the hour.
  The days wear on but I endure.
- "Le Pont Mirabeau" (Mirabeau Bridge), line 1; translation by William Meredith, from Francis Steegmuller Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 193.

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante
L'amour s'en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l'Espérance est violente
- And love runs down like this
  Water, love runs down.
  How slow life is,
  How violent hope is.
- "Le Pont Mirabeau" (Mirabeau Bridge), line 13; translation by William Meredith, from Francis Steegmuller Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 193.

Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
- Nor days nor any time detain.
  Time past or any love
  Cannot come again.
- "Le Pont Mirabeau" (Mirabeau Bridge), line 19; translation by William Meredith, from Francis Steegmuller Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 193.

Mon beau navire ô ma mémoire
Avons-nous assez navigué
Dans une onde mauvaise à boire
Avons-nous assez divagué
De la belle aube au triste soir
- O pretty ship, my memory
  Isn't this far enough to sea,
  And the sea not fit to drink?
  Haven't we drifted far and lost
  From fair dawn to dreary dusk?
- "La Chanson du Mal-Aimé" (Song of the Poorly Loved), line 51; translation by William Meredith, from Francis Steegmuller Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 95.

Adieu faux amour confondu
Avec la femme qui s'éloigne
Avec celle que j'ai perdue
L'année dernière en Allemagne
Et que je ne reverrai plus
Voie lactée ô sœur lumineuse
Des blancs ruisseaux de Chanaan
Et des corps blancs des amoureuses
Nageurs morts suivrons-nous d’ahan
Ton cours vers d'autres nébuleuses
- Farewell, false love, I took you for
  The woman that I lost last year
  Forever as I think:
  I loved her but I will not see
  Her any more in Germany.
  O Milky Way, sister in whiteness
  To Canaan's rivers and the bright
  Bodies of lovers drowned,
  Can we follow toilsomely
  Your path to other nebulae?
- "La Chanson du Mal-Aimé" (Song of the Poorly Loved), line 56; translation by William Meredith, from Francis Steegmuller Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 95.

Moi qui sais des lais pour les reines
Les complaintes de mes années
Des hymnes d'esclave aux murènes
La romance du mal-aimé
Et des chansons pour les sirènes
- I've made a song for the poorly loved
  And songs for everything I grieved –
  For unaccompanied slave and shark,
  For queens who've gone into the dark.
- "La Chanson du Mal-Aimé" (Song of the Poorly Loved), line 91; translation by William Meredith, from Francis Steegmuller Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 97.

Et ma vie pour tes yeux lentement s'empoisonne
- And for your eyes my life takes poison slowly.
- "Les colchiques" (The Saffrons), line 7; translation from Donald Revell (trans.) Alcools (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1995) p. 35.

Et l'unique cordeau des trompettes marines
- And the single string of the marine trumpets.
- "Chantre" (Singer), in its entirety; translations by William Meredith, from Francis Steegmuller Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 210.

Un jour
Un jour je m'attendais moi-même
Je me disais Guillaume il est temps que tu viennes
Pour que je sache enfin celui-là que je suis
Moi qui connais les autres
- One day
  One day I waited for myself
  I said to myself Guillaume it's time you came
  So I could know just who I am
  I who know others
- "Cortège", line 19; translation from Roger Shattuck (trans.) Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire (New York: New Directions, 1971) p. 75.

Je passais au bord de la Seine
Un livre ancien sous le bras
Le fleuve est pareil à ma peine
Il s'écoule et ne tarit pas
Quand donc finira la semaine
- I used to walk by the river
  An old book under my arm
  The river is the same as pain
  It elapses mindlessly
  And when will the week be over
- "Marie", line 21; translation from Donald Revell (trans.) Alcools (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1995) p. 75.

J'ai cueilli ce brin de bruyère
L'automne est morte souviens-t'en
Nous ne nous verrons plus sur terre
Odeur du temps brin de bruyère
Et souviens-toi que je t'attends
- I picked this sprig of heather
  Autumn has died you must remember
  We shall not see each other ever
  I'm waiting and you must remember
  Time's perfume is a sprig of heather
- "L'Adieu" (The Farewell), line 1; translation from Donald Revell (trans.) Alcools (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1995) p. 83.

Passons passons puisque tout passe
Je me retournerai souvent
Les souvenirs sont cors de chasse
Dont meurt le bruit parmi le vent
- We hurry since everything hurries
  And I shall never not return
  Memories are all archaic horns
  Silenced by the wind.
- "Cors de chasse" (Hunting Horns), line 9; translation from Donald Revell (trans.) Alcools (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1995) p. 159.

Calligrammes (1918)

Translations and page-numbers are from Donald Revell (trans.) The Self-Dismembered Man: Selected Later Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 2004).

Me voici devant tous un homme plein de sens
Connaissant la vie et de la mort ce qu'un vivant peut connaître
Ayant éprouvé les douleurs et les joies de l'amour
Ayant su quelquefois imposer ses idées
Connaissant plusieurs langages
Ayant pas mal voyagé
Ayant vu la guerre dans l'Artillerie et l'lnfanterie
Blessé à la tête trépané sous le chloroforme
Ayant perdu ses meilleurs amis dans l'effroyable lutte
Je sais d'ancien et de nouveau autant qu'un homme seul pourrait des deux savoir
- You see before you a man in his right mind
  Worldly-wise and with access to death
  Having tested the sorrow of love and its ecstasies
  Having sometimes even astonished the professors
  Good with languages
  Having travelled a great deal
  Having seen battle in the Artillery and the Infantry
  Wounded in the head trepanned under chloroform
  Having lost my best friends in the butchery
  As much of antiquity and modernity as can be known I know
- "La jolie rousse" (The Pretty Redhead), line 1; p. 133.

Nous voulons explorer la bonté contrée énorme où tout se tait
- We mean to explore kindness and its enormous silences.
- "La jolie rousse" (The Pretty Redhead), line 26; p. 135.

Voici que vient l'été la saison violente
Et ma jeunesse est morte ainsi que le printemps
Ô soleil c'est le temps de la raison ardente
- And now comes the summer of violence
  And my youth is as dead as the springtime
  O Sun it is the time of fiery Reason
- "La jolie rousse" (The Pretty Redhead), line 31; p. 135.

Ô bouches l'homme est a la recherche d'un nouveau langage
Auquel le grammairien d'aucune langue n'aura rien à dire
- O mouths humanity seeks a new language
  Beyond the reach of grammarians
- "Victoire" (Victory), line 21; p. 125.

Uncertain

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
- Commonly attributed, but source unknown.

Misattributed

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came
And he pushed
And they flew.
- Christopher Logue's poem "Come to the Edge" from New Numbers (London: Cape, 1969) pp. 65-66. It was originally written for a poster advertising an Apollinaire exhibition at the ICA in 1961 or 1962, and was titled "Apollinaire Said"; hence it is often misattributed to Apollinaire (Source: Quote…Unquote Newsletter, July 1995, p. 2).